C-Section

When I bend over to take off my shoes I can feel a little pinch of soreness on my spine. It’s the site where the doctors gave me a spinal. Having a shot in my spinal cord was one of the biggest worries I had while I was pregnant. I fretted so much about it, in fact, that I was considering natural childbirth. What a silly little thing I was…but now I understand why I had been so afraid. By the time I was in the operating room, being pulled and prodded at like a cow, having tubes pushed in my veins and urethra, the terror of the shot in my spinal cord was just part of a nightmare coming true.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I wanted to try and write specifically about the surgery. I have been avoiding writing about the C-Section because it’s difficult to relive, and it’s difficult for people to understand. My sadness and anger and fear about it have been the hardest thing to relay to my friends and family.

The surgery was traumatic. I guess no one ever imagines a scenario where they’re being held down and operated on while awake.  I know it would have been different if there had been more time- I know not everyone’s experience is like mine.  But I can’t reflect on that surgery without getting teared up or anxious.

There were dozens of people in the room and only three who would acknowledge me or talk to me.  Those three people will always have a special place in my heart- their compassion was the only thing that kept me from having a complete nervous breakdown in the operating room.  I kept saying “Stop, please stop touching me” and “What are you doing?” but most of my pleas were ignored.  

The type of C-Section I had prevents me from ever having a vaginal birth.  They had to do a more aggressive surgery because Tommy Jr was so small.  So going into labor in the future could compromise my uterus- it’s not considered safe.  I wish I had known I was in labor that day, I wish I had understood that what I was feeling, and that it was probably the last time I would ever feel it.  I feel like I was robbed of something I didn’t even know was so important to me.  Sometimes when I try and confide this feeling to other women, they try and cheer me up by saying “you’re lucky”, or that “vaginal birth isn’t a vacation” or some other quip.  The truth is that I had the option taken away from me without anything being explained, without me being reassured, without anyone considering my dreams of motherhood.  Giving birth to a baby was very much a part of my dream.  Violent surgery was not.

If I have another child maybe I’ll be able to carry him or her to term and my scheduled C-Section will be a breeze.  The terror and violation I feel every time I look at my scar will probably fade with time.  But some of that memory will never go away.  The blood on the sheet that shielded me from viewing what they were doing to my body, the doctor shouting to hold me down, the pressure I felt while they rearranged my guts and uterus- those memories are burned in my brain.  I will forever remember the feeling that they tore my heart out that day and put it in a little incubator on the 10th floor.